HONDURAN COUP GENERAL: “We’re Going After the Protest Leaders”

AUGUST 4, 2009, TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS: Five members of the Honduras coup regime’s military brass went on the pro-coup Televicentro Channel 5 from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. this morning in the capital city to defend their actions over the past 38 days since they kidnapped the elected President and forcibly exiled him from the country.

There, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, issued an exasperated threat to the leaders of the social movements organized against the coup:

“They lie and they lie and they lie forty times until it becomes the truth when they call us golpistas (coup mongers). Saying that we’re golpistas is a strategy. They call us ‘assassins.’ It’s an effort to demoralize the troops. When they do this, they are committing a crime, first and foremost, that of defamation. We’re going to go after them. They are acting with impunity.”

In sum, the coup’s maximum military leader is apoplectic that the Honduran population sees the coup as a coup, and the military that enforces it as part of that coup, and he wants to seek scapegoats for the fact that public opinion has turned against him, as if public opinion might change or at least shut up if only enough repression could be heaped upon it.

Offering heavy doses of defensiveness and delusion, the coup’s military leaders spent an hour this morning on TV 5’s Frente a Frente (“Face to Face”) program offering their spin on the events that are shaking this nation of 7.5 million people to the core.

Comandante General Miguel Angel García Padget of the Armed Forces said that the coup was necessary to stop “socialism and communism dressed as democracy.” He referred to the right wing authoritarian governments that preceded the Latin American wave of center-left electoral victories as “the true democracies.”

Admiral Juan Pablo Ramírez of the Honduran Navy put it this way: “The State is threatened by talk of a Constituent Assembly (Constitutional Convention). The whole system is going to fall to the interests of a small group.”

The Admiral did not explain how a Constitutional Convention, with delegates elected democratically by the entire Honduran electorate and representing every region, would somehow be captive to a “small group.” And the sycophantic talk show host mediating the TV round table, a pasty faced clown of faux-journalism named Renato Alvarez, of course did not ask for any clarification.

Air Force General Luis Javier Prince complained that unnamed protest leaders “are trained in the way they do things.”

“Why are they applying the same tactics from the 1980s of protests and blockades? They should forget about the protests,” added García Padget, the Honduran equivalent of the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Also appearing on the program this morning was Venancio Cervantes Suazo, sub chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The five military officials appeared in uniform, leaving little doubt of two major factors about to impact on the ground here throughout Honduras: One, that they are besides themselves that the population sees them as illegitimate coup mongers and assassins of the people and, two, they consider it part of their job to “go after” leaders of the civil resistance and want that known far and wide as a tactic to scare off the protests.

Further evidence of the panic in the Armed Forces can be found on its very own web page, littered with such propaganda messages as this one from July 31:

“Ever since the political crisis in Honduras began, persons that don’t deserve to be called citizens have been dedicated to cover the capital city walls with graffiti.”

The omnipresent graffiti – not just in the capital city, but in every town this reporter has visited this past week here – contains the very messages and words – “golpistas… asesinos…” with the names of General Vasquez and other coup leaders that the general complained about today and said was his motive to now “go after” the leaders of the civil resistance.